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Protests matter, but not always in the ways you think

Detroit Free Press (MI)

Oct. 09--Protests broke out this month in Detroit, D.C. and elsewhere, with fast-food workers fighting for better wages, union members demanding stronger contracts, and political demonstrators seeking to stop the seating of a Supreme Court nominee.

Their shouts and chants -- "We don't get it, shut it down," "What's disgusting? Union busting!" and "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Kavanaugh has got to go" -- could be heard throughout downtown Detroit and by anyone in the nation tuning in to television news.

But do those demonstrations, which seem to be proliferating, make a difference?

"That's a difficult question to answer," said Jo Reger, a professor of sociology at Oakland University, who has done research on the women's movement. "Part of it depends on how you want to measure what a difference is. Does it change the policy immediately that they are protesting? History tells us that's not always true."

The Women's March -- a worldwide protest of millions to change legislation aimed at reproductive rights, healthcare, gender equality, and equal pay -- was among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history.

But, activists have lamented that since then, there hasn't been more change.

Still, Reger and other researchers said, while research shows that protests don't always produce immediate results, they do tend to reach a large number of people, bring them to a cause, and over time, matter.

In addition, they point out, protests also give people a way to express their outrage and values, shape their identity and tell others what they care about, sometimes even after the original reason for the protest has largely gone away.

In Ferndale, for instance, a group of anti-war activists has met weekly to protest at the intersection of 9 Mile and Woodward. They first gathered in the 2000s to oppose military involvement in Iraq. But, nearly 16 years later, they still gather at the same corner to demonstrate.

"They are promoting peace over war," said Ferndale Police Sgt. Baron Brown. "They are eliciting people to honk for whatever issue they have. They lean toward a more elderly group. They are very passionate, very committed. They do it in the rain, sleet, snow, hot."

Protests are proliferating

A Kaiser Family Foundation study on protests earlier this year found President Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 brought "increased attention to political activism," both from Americans who supported him at rallies and those who joined protests and marches in opposition to him.

A half-century after "the tumultuous late 1960s, a time characterized by the civil rights movement, protests of the Vietnam War, and assassinations," the study concluded, the public tends to feel "that people who participate in rallies and protests today have become more extreme in their views, violent, organized, and effective in getting their voices heard, rather than less or about the same."

Protesting has long been a part of political activism.

In fact, America, as an independent nation, started as a protest against British rule.

"There is evidence protests make a difference," said Marc Kruman, a Wayne State University history professor and the director of the Center for the Study of Citizenship. "But it depends on the particular policy or group."

Efforts for unionization, for example, are different from people seeking to change public policy.

"If you look at the impact of protests on public policy it's not something that's usually instantaneous, but it is certainly consequential," Kruman said. "I wouldn't say the Vietnam war protests ended the war, but they certainly had an impact on policymakers in Washington."

Reger, Kruman and Brown all agree that the number of protests in recent years seems to be increasing, in part, because social media and the Internet is making it easier to broadcast information and organize activity online with a hashtag, like #MeToo, and in real life.

"It's so much easier now to spread a message to gather a group of people," Reger said. "You can actually do digital protests through social media. If you think about the women's marches that started recently, that was spread all through social media, Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram."

Kruman added that in addition to public policy protests, there seems to be a resurgence of unionization, although the union movement has been in decline and faced political headwinds that are working against it.

Some police forces, like Ferndale, are budgeting more in anticipation of more protests.

This year, Brown said, Ferndale police set aside $25,000 for police overtime and other resources needed to help police demonstrations and to make sure that the public -- and the protesters -- are safe in case crowds swell and tensions run high.

Patience is required

While grabbing a bite to eat at Campus Martius in Detroit, a frequent gathering point for protests, Shalena and Darius Ward of Highland Park offered different views on how effective protests are on drawing people to the cause.

Protests, the said, can both activate and repel bystanders.

"You're getting people engaged," Shalena Ward, 34 of Highland Park said. "They also are educating themselves more. They're voting more consciously. Protests get the buzz going and they become a part of that movement."

At the same time, Ward's husband said, protests aren't enough.

"Protests can be good as long as the people protesting are taking actions to do something about what they are protesting about," said Darius Ward, 33. "There are a lot of people who protest and that's it. They think the protest is the change."

Moreover, he said, too many messages at the same time can drown each other out.

But, Reger said, it often take years, even generations, of sustained protests to see results.

Protests by fast food workers to raise wages to $15 an hour began in 2012, and are ongoing.

And many of the women who began protesting for suffrage in America in the 1860s did not live to see the ratification of the 19th Amendment nearly 60 years later that ultimately gave women the Constitutional right to vote.

And in some ways, the hundreds of protesters who traveled to the nation's capital to rally in a final push to block Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court might be seen as an extension of efforts to advance women's issues.

But, change isn't the only way to evaluate whether protests are successful, Reger said.

Protests become a part of who the protesters are -- and how they want to see themselves in the world.

"That's something people get from protests: a sense of belonging, identity, purpose -- all those things," Reger said. "People who do longstanding protests are people who are concerned and engaged in an issue."